Rejected petition: Regulate social media posts identifying people over unverified allegations
Rejected on
We ask the UK Government to introduce legislation or statutory guidance restricting social media pages from publishing identifiable photographs of private individuals alongside unverified allegations, except where there is a clear lawful or public interest.
Community social media pages are an important way for people to discuss local issues and share information. However, some pages allow anonymous allegations of embarrassing or inappropriate behaviour to be published alongside identifiable photographs of individuals or their property (such as easily identifiable photos of the person with only their eyes obscured, or photos of their car numberplate), before any facts have been established. This could lead to individuals being targeted.
Why was this petition rejected?
We can't publish petitions when the request is something that's already happening or something that has been announced since you started your petition.
We think your petition is covered by Government or Parliament action already. If you'd like something else, you could start a new petition clearly explaining what it is.
While there is no standalone law for this, someone can be prosecuted for defamation under the Defamation Act 2013 if a publication has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm to the claimant's reputation.
Under the Act, website operators, including social media websites, can be prosecuted, and website operators have a strict 48-hour window to respond to a valid notice of complaint regarding user-generated content to maintain a statutory defence against defamation claims or must remove the content.
We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.